Kaleto Fortress – Koshnitsa, Bulgaria

The Late Antiquity and medievalfortress near the town of Koshnitsa, SmolyanDistrict, known as Kaleto, is located on a 1006-meter mount of marble and limestone. It is connected with a cave leading into the valley of the Arda River.Archaeologicalexcavations have found evidence that the cave as used as a prehistoricsanctuary while the mount itself was fortified as early as the 5th-4thmillennium BC (during the Chalcolithic (also known as Aeneolithic or Copper Age)). Its site has traces of prehistorichuman presence from the Late Chalcolithic, the Bronze Age, the Early Iron Age (11th-6th century AD), and the period of Ancient Thrce and Ancient Rome.

The fortress near Koshnitsa was in use in the Late Antiquity and Early Byzantine period – in the 6th century – and again during the period of the Byzantineoccupation of Bulgaria (1018-1185 AD) and the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396 AD), in the 11th-13th century. During the Late Antiquity, the fortress near Koshnitsa guarded major routes within the RhodopeMountains, namely, the transitionalroute in the mountains linking the so called Diagonal Roman Road (Via Militaris) and the RomanRoad running along the Aegean coast (Vid Egnatia). It has been by archaeologists from the Smolyan Regional Museum of History.